Poland and Christendom

THE END OF THE ARMISTICE--G. K. Chesferfon--Sheed & Ward ($2).

POLISH PROFILE--Virgil/a Sapieha--Garrick & Evans--($2.50).

The End of the Armistice is a collection of essays written by England's dauntlessly civilized Chesterton between the middle '20s and his death in 1936. His point of view is consistent, two of his premises are peculiarly interesting: 1) that the Allies fought World War I in a cause that was too good for them, and for which Hitler would compel them to fight again--a cause of which they were not fully aware: to preserve Western Christendom from destruction by Prussia, the comparatively new, barbaric overlord of an otherwise civilized Germany; 2) that Christian Poland was the great bulwark and friend of Western Europe.

Even to people who have no means of sharing Chesterton's European culture and Roman Catholic faith, his thesis, though it is not unique, will seem uniquely clean-cut. It is serenely distinct from cliches of wartime propaganda. Chesterton points out that, if Europe's politicians had understood the real issues at stake, they would never have weakened Christian Germany (Austria) after the War, nor allowed pagan Prussia again to become strong. He foresaw that Naziism and Bolshevism would get together. "If or when the New Germany moves one inch towards infringing on the present ancient frontiers of the Polish realm--then I shall know that I was right."

What prevented liberal Englishmen and Americans from thinking Chesterton was right was, for one thing, a disagreement over what constitutes civilization. To Chesterton, Poland was an outpost of civilization because it was a Catholic nation. To the liberal Western mind, Poland seemed a backward and feudal country, greatly inferior in efficient industrial plant and social services--two modern criteria of civilization--even to Nazi Germany. To those who like to dispose of other people's affairs by logic alone, the logical conclusion should have been that it did Poland good last autumn to be taken over and "organized" by two such efficient neighbors.

But this was not the universal sentiment of the West. In Polish Profile, Princess Paul Sapieha (Virgilia Peterson Ross) documents the perplexity. A young woman from Manhattan who married a Polish aristocrat, Princess Sapieha (pronounced Sa-pee-ayz-ha) lived for six years in Poland and escaped last September under the wings of German bombers. She has written her book for her two children to inform them of the society into which they were born and which has now been ruined. It is an honest and unobtrusively well-written story, full of unaccented human truth. The wildness and gloom of her husband's country oppressed her; the rigid social etiquette and slack business habits of his friends made her smile, the rituals of boar hunting on his 10,000-acre estate both thrilled and repelled her; his family's profound and narrow piety troubled her; the ignorance, poverty and knavery of his peasants disgusted her. Because she was a straight--and nai've--American, her book clearly mirrors all that. But because she is intelligent and gentle, it also mirrors individuality, fertility and peace; the pride of a people long oppressed and newly independent; the care of one class for another; the possibilities, under a not despotic government, for life's improvement.

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